I already wrote about Mather a while ago. He’s the author of the Atopia Chronicles series. I wouldn’t call it strictly SciFi, but it typically gets categorized as such. Categories are, by definition, approximations of reality.
Mather has recently published a new book: CyberStorm. I got an advance copy (thanks Matthew!), but I didn’t start it until a couple weeks ago. You see, I’m a slow reader.
I was skeptical at first. The title and book description didn’t seem much credible. I’m happy to say I was totally wrong.
Spoiler alert!
My point was, a global cyber attack that takes human civilization on the brink of destruction feels like a Hollywood b-movie – or a blockbuster, I’m not sure.
But CyberStorm is not a book about a cyber attack – or cyber storm. It’s a book, a story, about human nature. What drives women and men to do certain things and behave a certain way, is marginal. A cyber attack, while well-argued and plausible, is just an excuse to explore how we behave when we cannot communicate, when we are isolated, when what we take for granted crumbles to pieces. Technology is fragile, and becoming even more so with each passing day, and we’re permeated in it. When it’s not there anymore, or doesn’t work, we’re almost impaired, close to being unable to cope with simple problems, like feeding ourselves. Large conglomerations of humans – cities – are even more vulnerable to events that knock even basic technology off. Pack a large number of humans in a tight space with limited resources and no communications, and you get a mess. Sprinkle a few crumbles of wrong or incomplete information, and those same humans, used to be able to know everything at any time, go nuts.
Technology is fragile, and thus we are. I’m not saying we should start packing emergency supplies like there’s a cyber storm coming tomorrow, nor I’m suggesting we should dump technology and go back to the stone age – that would be stupid. I just think we should always remember that there might be… disruptions, and we should not allow them to kill us all.
Now a final note. Cyber war is real. Just Google “stuxnet” to learn how the US and Israel infected Iranian nuclear plants to physically break machines. The US already stated that they will respond to cyber attacks with physical actions (read: bombs). That’s fine. The point is, what happens in “cyberspace” (I hate that definition) is no longer relegated there. It can get physical. Just think about it – don’t be paranoid – but think about it.
So that’s a verbose way to say, go and read CyberStorm.